2014-11-28

As some of the regular readers of this blog may have
realized by now, I stem from the country of Norway, which is situated way north
of most sensible latitudes in Europe. Sharing a border with my home country is
another country called Finland, also a weird place, covered in snow and saunas.
However, should you happen to look really carefully at the map, you may find a
third country stuck between the two aforementioned ones – and if you can be
bothered to look up the statistics for this country you’ll also find that it is
both bigger and more populous than either. This, dear beer lover, is the
country of Sweden.

Sweden is a country with a long history of aggressive
behaviour. A few hundred years ago, the king would round up an army at regular
intervals and go marauding down in central Europe, mainly to escape the long
winter nights and the endless supply of pickled herring back home. The army
would pillage, rape and murder, but eventually they’d meet someone who could
actually fight and promptly retreat homewards. Finally, after many years of
such expensive tomfoolery, they simply decided that they preferred pickled
herring and long winter nights and declared themselves forever neutral.

Having finished the mandatory history lesson, you now know
pretty much all that’s worth knowing about Sweden – except what the beer
situation is like. It’s really lucky that I’m writing this blog entry now and
not 10 years ago, because back then it would have been summarized in a single
word: simply awful. The sober ones amongst you may have realized that this was
three words. Never mind. My point is: Sweden’s beer scene has actually improved
massively, and can now be summarized in four words: not as awful as it used to
be.

Sweden, like most countries, used to have loads of local and
regional breweries that would output stuff suitable to quench the thirst of the
local populace. The story continues as expected: as transport improved and
capitalism started to bite, breweries got bought out by others, and the beer
scene steadily converged on a handful of national brands, which then got bought
out by the big international you-know-whos. The unusual thing about Sweden,
though, is that the politicians decided to add a bureaucratic twist to the
story by banning the sale of beers above a certain alcohol percentage from
being sold in normal stores – more or less exactly what was done in Norway,
too. The depressing thing about Sweden is that they set the limit at 3.5%
instead of the Norwegian’s more sensible 4.7% - which means that all normal
beer styles can no longer be sold in normal shops.

What followed was a disaster for people who like good beer.
The 3.5% limit meant that all breweries focused on alcohol percentage rather
than taste – the stuff in the normal shops was weak and undrinkable, whereas
the stronger stuff sold in the state-controlled shops known as “Systembolaget”
was, well, stronger – but still pretty much undrinkable, even though it at least
did a decent job in getting you drunk. In fact, for many years Swedes would simply order "en stor stark", which translates as "a big strong", in this case meaning beer, completely without regard to which beer style or brewery was behind the alcoholic beverage that would subsequently appear in your glass. Luckily, the story does not end here. Slowly,
but surely, the Systembolaget shops started to put foreign beers on the
shelves, and discerning Swedes (and foreigners in Sweden) realized that there
were other types of beer than just “weak” and “strong”.

Rewind forward a dozen years or so, and the Systembolaget
stocks hundreds of imported beers as well as a reasonable selection of new
Swedish beers made by recently established breweries keen to join the beer
revolution. Since my arse is currently sat on a lovely Swedish wooden chair in
the far-north city of Luleå, and since I have just had the pleasure of trying 3
of these Swedish beers, I thought I’d write an insanely long introduction
before getting to the main point of this blog entry: beer.

Typical Swedish strong beer - nowadays brewed by Spendrup's

Oh, before I forget, since I may have been slightly unkind
to Sweden at the beginning of this text, I will now try to balance this by
saying that I find both the beer selection and the prices in the Systembolaget
(conveniently situated around the corner from my hotel) excellent, especially seen
with my Norwegian eyes. Both Norway and Sweden have a reputation for
eye-wateringly high taxes on alcohol, but the beer is still about HALF the
price in Swedish shops. This, of course, reminds me of the Great Scandinavian
Beer Relay: Norwegians pop across the border to buy cheap Swedish beer, the
Swedes pop across to Denmark to buy even cheaper beer, and the Danes to the
same thing in Germany. I took the shortcut straight to Germany.

So what have I been drinking today to inspire such a
wonderfully eloquent entry? Well, I started off with a St Eriks IPA. This
brewery is situated in the wonderful capital of Sweden, Stockholm, a city worth
visiting for many reasons, not least the chance of visiting the former pride of
the Swedish navy, the Wasa, a ship so fantastic that it capsized in calm
weather about 1300 metres (yes, metres - less than a mile for the lovers of imperial units) into its maiden voyage and then spent the next 300
years on the bottom of the sea before being salvaged and put into a rather
magnificent museum. The St Eriks IPA certainly did not capsize, although I have
to say that it didn’t massively impress either – good, but not great.

Next up was the Organic Ale from Sigtuna brewery. Sigtuna is
a small town situated just outside Stockholm, and was apparently founded by the
Vikings more than 1000 years ago. The brewery is considerably newer, having
been founded in 2005. As it happens, their internet pages have just told me
that this brewery shares its premises with St Erik. Oh well, I guess this might
explain why this beer was also good, but not great. It’s a pleasant beer but without
anything to set it apart from the bunch.

The final beer was from a brewery called “Oppigårds”, and
the very promising label said “Thurbo Double IPA”. My expectations were
unsurprisingly sky high, and in this case the beer did not disappoint. This was
a hoppilicious beer, a bit like hopping on a hop field whilst chewing hop gum
and being generally hoppy. In fact, I have already thought about immediately planning
to write to them and suggest that they change the brewery name to “Hoppigårds”.
If you’re now chuckling to yourself, rest assured that you have the same crappy
sense of humour as the author, also known to myself simply as “I”.

OK, what’s the conclusion? Well, don’t go to Sweden
just because of the beer. The same can be said about the food, the scenery, the
weather and the skiing. However, Sweden is a bit like the Volvo – safe, without
being terribly exciting. You might find that it’s the combination of many
things that makes Sweden a worthwhile place to visit. That, and the Wasa ship.
Imagine making one of the world's greatest museums out of your biggest, most embarrassing naval
disaster. This alone is worth a trip, and when you’re in Stockholm you might as
well drink a few tasty beers from the new breweries that have sprung up in the
last decade or so. Have fun, and don’t forget to skål with the locals. Skål!

2014-10-28

Every so often, when I travel around Germany for no, one or perhaps
several good reasons, I come across strange little places that somehow stick
out from the bunch. Most villages in Germany are actually pretty boring –
they usually consist of a few well-kept houses clustered around a through road,
with perhaps a church, a bakery and – if you’re really lucky – a pub to
add a minor amount of interest. The two things that can make a German village
leap from complete obscurity to a permanent place in my consciousness are a
splendid name and the presence of a brewery.

Village names are usually
forgotten as soon as you’ve cycled through, but since there are almost as many
villages as there are people in Germany, some are bound to differentiate themselves
by naming themselves a bit more adventurously. It could be argued that a
handful have taken this too far – the village of “Fucking” situated on the
German-Austrian border certainly have their fair share of people driving
through with screwdrivers and angle cutters to purloin the signs. There are a
few other ones that were no doubt named some time before English became the
world language – my favourites, though, are the ones that don’t make sense in
English (or any other language I know), but simply sound funny. Which brings me
to the main topic of this blog post: beer.

I may have mentioned once or twice that I like beer and that
Germany has both good beer and an amazing number of breweries. The fact that I,
who likes beer, live in Germany and travel to Bavaria whenever I have the
chance, is a happy coincidence. And so it came to pass that, for my lovely wife’s
birthday weekend last week, I booked us a nice escape in, you guessed it,
Bavaria. I managed to wrap the weekend present in fluffy things such as a
gourmet meal, a race, a trip to the local spa/swimming complex and a bit of
geocaching, all of which camouflaged the beer hunting agenda very nicely,
except that I had made the somewhat obvious “mistake” of booking a hotel next
to the local brewery, namely the Löwenbräu (incidentally a very boring brewery
name) in Bad Wörishofen. The “bad” actually means “bath”, and was something
just about every town that discovered some kind of natural spring decided to
stick in front of their name to attract the hordes of tourists that seek to
immerse their corpulent bodies in the allegedly healing qualities of the water.
There are so many of these “Bad” towns nowadays that the humorous value of
reading the name in English has completely faded, with the obvious exception of
“Bad Kissingen”.

Another brewery we stumbled upon

Anyway, having enjoyed a very expensive, fancy and incredibly
gourmet meal on my wife’s actual birthday, I managed to convince her to sneak in
a little nightcap half-litre in the brewery’s very pleasant and cosy bar. Fresh
beer straight from the brewery seldom fails to hit the mark, and the very
sturdy beers they had on tap both impressed – the Urtrunk was quite dark, malty
and full-bodied whereas the Helles was also malty, but unsurprisingly a bit
spicier and lighter.

The real jewel around Bad Wörishofen is a place about 10km
away, though – and I’m talking about none other than the world not very famous village
of……… DIRLEWANG. Now there’s a village name straight from the top drawer. I
have no idea how they managed to come up with such a classic, but considering
they also had the sense to reject closing the local brewery, I now officially
declare the village of Dirlewang the best tiny place in Germany to visit for
between 5 and 10 minutes, unless you’re not driving in which case you should
stop for a few beers. As it happened, I was in a car, but I nevertheless
stopped for 4 beers, which I requested to be surrounded by brown glass and
sealed with a crown cap, a bit like a working class king if you see what I
mean. Anyway, the brewery bar itself was an interesting place – probably
refurbished sometime just after the Napoleonic Wars and populated by a bunch of
geezers who were a smidgeon too young to have fought in them. The reception was
friendly though, even though the local dialect can be a challenge, and I was
allowed to take away said 4 beers for the princely price of €3.20, which I
rounded up to €4 to ensure that the brewery remains profitable.

Why am I telling you all this? Mainly because I haven’t got
anything else to say and that I have just tried one of the four beers, just to
celebrate the end of yet another working day. And boy was the beer good, in
fact even better quality than the work I did today, which wasn’t too bad either.
A satisfyingly full body was livened by just the right amount of hoppy
spiciness to ensure a pleasurable passage down my thirsty throat. The best news
is that I still have two beers left from Dirlewang as well as a six-pack from a
very nice brewery in Ottobeuren as well as a few more local ones that I picked
up in a bottle shop. Feel free to pop by for a little tasting session.

A real Dirlewanger waiting to be consumed

All good things must come to an end, they say, and so it was
with both the weekend in Bavaria, the bottle of beer from Dirlewang and this
blog post. All that remains is to observe that the evening is dark and that the
temperature is dropping. This, surely, means that winter is around the corner,
and that the Christmas beer is sitting somewhere, maturing, and waiting to be
wheeled into the shops and supermarkets, or – if you’re in Norway – the state-controlled
monopoly outlets. The only benefit of this monopoly is that they’ve got a
catalogue of all the beers you can supposedly buy there, so it makes it much
easier to compose your Christmas wish list. In fact, perhaps I’ll just send the
entire catalogue off to Santa Claus’ North Pole lair and hope he doesn’t drink
it all before he delivers it down the chimney in time for the annual Christmas
beer tasting. As they say amongst the Inuits up in that part of the world: Inuuhiqatsiaq!

2014-09-23

I’ve been flying a lot lately. I like travelling, and end up
jetting around quite a lot both for business and pleasure. I also like beer, as
some of you may have gathered by now. How, then, do these two things go
together? Are there hoppy pleasures to be had thirty thousand feet off the
ground? These are questions I know most of you have been tempted to consider
dying to ask, so I thought I’d share my experiences with you on this absolutely
fascinating topic.

As with all serious subjects, a little historical background
is a great way to waste a paragraph or two. Flying’s been around since some
pre-historic birds first climbed up a convenient tree to fling themselves at
the ground, and missed. However, it took a long time before humans developed
wings – quite a few tried emulating the birds, but usually failed to miss hitting
the ground in what was undoubtedly a very painful fashion, and so it wasn’t really until the Wright
brothers combined two oversized ironing boards and a lawn mower on a beach in
North Carolina in December 1903 that the concept of flying for humans really, and quite
literally, took off. Humanity hasn’t looked back since, though quite often
down.

The inflight service on the very first flight was probably quite limited, especially since it lasted less than a minute.
Apparently, the first flight attendants appeared only about 30 years later,
complete with a friendly smile and an appropriate amount of hard liquor to
settle the nerves of the passengers, who back in those days had a relatively
high chance of hitting the ground very hard and therefore regretting not taking
the train. Luckily, the situation nowadays is very different – flying is just
about the safest way to travel, so there’s absolutely no reason not to sit
back, relax and enjoy a little luxury such as a fine brew or two, if only such
pleasures had been widely available.

Those of you who have actually bothered to drag your arses
to the nearest airport to board a sardine box that, in complete breach of most
of the laws of physics, lifts itself from the ground and brings you relatively
quickly (unless Icelandic Volcanoes are throwing some lava into the mix) to
your preferred destination (unless you’ve made the classic mistake of boarding
a plane to “Torquay” instead of “Turkey”, or “Dakar” instead of “Dhaka”), will
know that (unless you’ve re-mortgaged your house to pay for business class) the
stuff you get for free (or, more accurately, included) is, at best, very
limited. In fact, many airlines won’t give you anything at all unless you pay
extra through a nostril of your choice, though they usually accept credit
cards. However, despite all this, most airlines do have at least one beer on
offer.

A very common sight up there.

Unfortunately, the beer revolution that has resulted in an
incredible increase in the number and styles of beers on offer in the average
pub or supermarket has completely failed to lift off the ground. The average
inflight trolley will contain a few cans of what is simply known as “beer”,
whereas the wine buffs at least get to choose between “red” and “white”. To
make matters worse, the “beer” on offer is typically one of the big industrial
blands (sic), so if you fancy a “beer” with “taste”, you are probably out of
luck. There are some exceptions though: the main airline in Switzerland,
cunningly named “Swiss”, actually serves up quite a decent local beer from
Appenzeller land (a rural Canton in the north-east for the many geography buffs
among you), which – at least for people who like lager – has a nice hoppy
taste. For the time being, Swiss is also one of the few airlines that will let
you have a can or two without charging you for it. Not sure if this justifies
always flying via Zurich regardless of where you want to go, but it’s clearly
worth bearing in mind.

Quite a few cans of decent lager taking off.

Another airline that takes beer a little bit more seriously
than most is good old British Airways. Last time I flew with BA, I actually had
the choice of no fewer than FOUR beers, though since three of them were predictable
global tasteless lagers, there wasn’t really much of a choice. The last one,
though, was one of the fairly safe British bitters, namely London Pride. Never
a truly great drinking experience, but hardly ever a disappointing one either,
Pride for sure might just probably be perhaps the best beer you’re ever likely
to get served in, on or above the clouds.

Having said that, a bit of internet research reveals that,
mirroring the situation on the ground, North American airlines seem to provide
both the worst and best beers in the sky. Some of the biggest airlines (which I have flown with), which I
shall refrain from naming and shaming, stick to the old “making love in a canoe”
ones, whereas at least a handful (including Alaska Airlines and Virgin America, neither of which I have been on) have started serving craft beers – a round of applause is merited, I think. I clearly need to travel more.

So who’s the winner? Which is the world’s best beerline? I can't decide, so I'm just going to say that it’s the train. It may be slower, but this simply means more time to savour
your beer – and best of all, you can buy a couple of great beers and
bring them on board with you. Apparently, it’s more environmentally friendly
too, although getting to Canada, Australia and Japan from Europe on the train
remains a bit of a challenge.

On this lofty note I shall end this informative and highly
entertaining blog post, and wish you all a lovely autumn (or spring, should you
read this from the southern hemisphere). My advice to you for the coming weeks
until the next post appears is to drink beerfully, fly high, train hard and
don’t worry – be hoppy. As they say in Finland: Kippis!

2014-07-21

Every year, exactly 7 weeks after the predictably unpredictable holiday we call Easter, occurs another, slightly shorter holiday, which in
English is known as Whitsunday. In Germany and some other countries that like
their days off, the Monday following more or less directly after Whitsunday is a
public holiday. The main reason for this extra holiday, regardless of when it
happens to show up in any given year, is to drink beer. Therefore, my wife and
I headed off to one of the few cities in Germany where I hadn’t been, which
also happens to be the oldest, namely Trier, mainly because it is one of the
few that rhymes with Bier – which is German for beer. With such a cunningly
clucked out plan, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, for starters I had booked the train to get there.
Despite the Germans’ reputation for efficiency, their train system seems to be
riddled with delays, which caused us to miss a connection, get re-routed
through an entirely different region and arrive nine minutes late. As a result,
all the beer drinking of the weekend was delayed by nine minutes, though I am
not sure if this made a huge difference.

Trier was founded by the Romans, those dodgy wine-drinking
folks that spread their forums, amphitheatres and hot baths around most of Europe
before imploding in their own orgies. It is situated on the river Mosel, which
meanders its way through vineyards and pretty towns, before emptying into the
great river Rhine. Unsurprisingly, Trier has a lot of history, and also some pretty
passable Roman ruins that you can enjoy looking at if you’re into that sort of
thing.

The "Black Gate" (Porta Negra), Trier's most famous Roman building

The best thing about sight-seeing is that it makes you very
thirsty, so it wasn’t long before we set off in search of the first Trier Bier. Always trying to increase our productivity by doing multiple things simultaneously, we were also busy pondering the following question: if you, like me, like to try beers, are you then a beer trier? Whilst
mulling over this we observed something slightly odd: no matter where we looked
– east, west, north, south, up, down, left, right or anywhere in between, the
beer on offer was called Bitburger.
This is a beer I’ve had many times before, as it is one of the biggest brands
in Germany. There’s nothing wrong with it – it can, in fact, be quite good at
times – but it wasn’t what I had arrived nine minutes late for. I was, of
course, aware of the fact that the town of Bitburg, presumably named after the brewery, is situated only a couple of dozen kilometres from Trier, but I hadn’t quite
expected such outrageous dominance. So, I gave in and order one. It was
refreshing, quite tasty and in many respects acceptably local. However, I wanted
more.

As it turned out, a 10-minute walk past the amphitheatre, my
favourite people in Trier had founded my favourite place in Trier back in 1998
– the exquisite little brewery known as “Kraft Bräu”, where they not only brew
their own beer, they also allowed me to drink as much of it as I liked. This fantastic combination was hard to resist,
and given the lack of other choices in Trier I thought why not, give me the
beer menu (they had two) and let’s get to work. Their standard beers were the
same as most places in Germany: a light Helles,
a dark Dunkles, and a wheat beer.
These were all very good – unfiltered and refreshing, just right for everyday
drinking, especially on a hot day (it was a hot day). Then they had their
“special selection” – a pale ale, an IPA, an outrageous IPA and a pilsner.
Combined with a lovely beer garden, perfect weather, superb food and a relaxed
atmosphere, this place was so good that we just had to come back.

Fantastic brews from Trier's only remaining brewery

Another feature of Trier is its proximity to one of Europe’s
most anonymous nations, namely Luxembourg. A small super-rich country which has
seemingly never offended anyone, and therefore stays out of the news and most people’s consciousness. However, a country is a country and if I have the
chance to drink a beer in it, I surely will. Thus, we rented bikes and set off
on the lovely cycle path along the river until we crossed a bridge which also
turned out to be the border. Gone were all the signs with “Bitburger” written
on them, replaced by signs saying “Bofferding”. This mysterious-sounding beer
turned out to be… very drinkable. And that’s just about all there is to say
about Luxembourg, because after we finished our beers we caught what must be one
of the shortest international ferry journeys in the world (sixty-seven and a
half seconds) back to Germany, thus avoiding crossing the same bridge twice.
The cycle ride back generated just enough thirst to warrant another visit to
Kraft Bräu, where the beers turned out to be even better now that the weather
was even hotter.

Luxembourg! The country is considerably bigger than the beer mat.

The last day in Trier, just before the train was due to
leave, we noticed that there were loads of people drinking wine, and we also heard a rumour that the Mosel Valley is world famous for its wines. As this was the only thing
you could drink in Trier not made by Bitburger, we decided to try some. Oh
well, we all make mistakes sometimes.

Waiting for the international ferry (sadly no duty free onboard).

Since everything was nine minutes delayed due to our
unfortunate late arrival, it came as no surprise that our return train was also
nine minutes late. The unfortunate thing about this was that we then missed our
connection to the only train that ran on time in Germany on this particular
day. We then proceeded to make our way home on trains that, at some time or
another, had every possible delay between 5 and 105 minutes. Needless to say,
this was great fun, and we made inappropriate jokes about all the world’s train
systems except the Swiss one (which we only made appropriate jokes about) until
we arrived back home sometime in the middle of the night.

In conclusion, Trier was a nice and interesting place to
visit, but the dominance of a single pilsner-only brewery makes it a little bit
boring in this respect. However, if you search you will sometimes find, which applies to both geocaching and breweries – and so it came to pass that both the
beer blogger and his wife found what they were looking for. A couple of weeks later, we completed an epic
journey from Copenhagen to Karlsruhe by bike and beer, so
check out this blog in a few weeks’ time and perhaps you'll be lucky enough to find a summery summary.
Until then: Zum Skål!

2014-05-24

I don’t often get to add a whole new country to the rather
long list of countries from which I have sampled one or more beers, and it’s a
similar story when it comes to countries I have visited. Therefore, you can
imagine my excitement when last week I got to add a country to each list – and
not just any old country, but a relatively new one, namely Serbia.

Serbia, with its capital Belgrade, is one of the many
countries in Europe with a rather unfortunate history. Dominated by either the
Turks or the Austrians for centuries, the country was attacked, sacked, burnt
down, rebuilt, reburnt and otherwise molested dozens of times all the way up
until 1999, when (hopefully) the last bombs finally fell. Belgrade, meanwhile,
went from being a Roman settlement through a fortified town and then on to become
the capital of the rather substantial country I was used to seeing on the
European maps of my childhood – Yugoslavia. Then bit after bit fell off, until
today we’re left with a smallish landlocked country that roughly half the world
think is about the size of Kosovo smaller than roughly the other half of the world.

Belgrade itself is a very interesting city, though you do get
the feeling that it’s past its heyday – lots of buildings are crumbling and the
pavement is anything but even. However, there’s also a vibe and a big bridge in
the city that suggests it may be heading back towards former greatness, and
what better place to start than to be the main topic of a blog post by the
famous beer blogger? Which, incidentally, reminds me nicely that I need to move
on to the main topic of this blog: beer.

Belgrade: interesting city, but more gritty than pretty.

I had, of course, done some homework on Belgrade before
leaving, so I knew that it would be unwise to expect a huge variety of
fantastic beers. However, being both an optimist and a strong believer that I
am almost always lucky meant that I attacked the task of drinking my way
through the Serbian beer selection with no small amount of enthusiasm. The
first problem I encountered was actually buying the stuff – when I got to the
supermarket, the selection was remarkably biased towards the big European
brands you can buy almost everywhere – Staropramen, Carlsberg, Amstel and all
the others you should always try to avoid. However, I managed to find a handful
of beers that I thought looked sufficiently local, not least due to the label
having cyrillic letters, and put them in the fridge in the small apartment we
had rented.

The first two beers I tried were the “Niksicko Pivo” and the
“Niksicko Tamno”, a pils and a dark beer, which I subsequently discovered were
actually brewed in the Trebjesa brewery in…. Montenegro. Oh well, the beers
weren’t that good and the brewery is, unsurprisingly, owned by one of the big bad
guys, namely Molson Coors. So on went the quest for my first Serbian beer.

My first ever Serbian beer. It was crap.

Next up was a beer called “Lav”, which is a light industrial
lager that made the unfortunate, but not uncommon mistake of insulting the beer
blogger by tasting of next to nothing, though when I tried really hard I
thought I detected a slightly unpleasant hint of metal. A quick look on the
bottle confirmed my suspicion that the brand is owned by Carlsberg, but since
it’s brewed in Serbia it was, and remains, the first beer I have ever tried
from this country – sadly, it was rubbish.

Much better head and much more taste.

The next two beers were from a brewery in a small town
called Valjevo. First down my throat was the “Bajbebcko Tufo”, which turned out
to be the most interesting beer of the session – first and foremost it poured
with a good head, and then it actually tasted of something. In fact, I thought
I detected a hint of smoke on the palate, but it could just have been the
cigarette smoke that was present all over Belgrade – not a city for people who
can’t stand smokers, by the way. The second beer, called “Atlas Pils”, was
therefore a huge disappointment – it tasted as if it was brewed with stuff that
shouldn’t go into beer such as maize, rice or armchairs, though to be fair it
was slightly better than Lav.

Could be worse - see above.

I didn’t find the final Serbian beer of the holiday until
the next day – we had been walking around the very picturesque castle area, and
stopped for refreshments at a café when I saw the brand “Jelen”. I wasted an
infinitesimal amount of time before ordering a half litre, which duly arrived
after a considerably longer waiting period. This draught beer was actually very
pleasant - nice hops and a medium body complemented the sunshine and the rising
temperatures perfectly. I later tried it in a bottle, where it wasn’t quite the
same, and I also discovered that the brewery, called “Apatinska” and founded in
1756, is nowadays owned by – you guessed it – Molson Coors.

Sunshine and draft beer is seldom a bad combination.

Serbian beer was, in conclusion, a lot less interesting than
the country itself. My advice is certainly to visit Belgrade some time, and if
you fancy a half litre of your favourite tipple, then there are hundreds, if
not thousands of bars that will happily take your order and charge you a
remarkably small percentage of your holiday budget for the pleasure – roughly
€1.50 seemed to be the going rate. So what Belgrade lacks in beer quality you
could certainly make up for in quantity without necessarily breaking the bank,
which incidentally was exactly what the river was doing as we visited,
apparently due to four months’ worth of rain falling in two days just prior to
our arrival.

So, go ahead and book your plane, train or bus ticket to
Belgrade unless you happen to live there already, and spend a few days checking
out this very lively and friendly place where old decommissioned Swiss trams
still rumble around on rickety tracks and the floating bars on the river are heaving
until the early hours. Most people are happy to speak English, but if you do
fancy trying out the local language you could do worse than ordering a beer and
shout “живели”, or “Ziveli”, which apparently means “let’s live long”, which
surely is something worth drinking a non-fatal amount of beer to.

2014-04-24

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the blog! It’s been a
memorable winter, mostly because it never arrived, and we now have early summer
instead of spring. Summer is definitely one of my top four seasons in which to
drink beer, so the arrival of warm days and long evenings has also spurred me
into making sure that my fridge is well stocked with bottles of my favourite
tipple.

My wife asked me a few weeks ago why I never take her on a
guided tour of the different beer styles of the world, and she had a point.
We’ve been cycling around Germany several times, visiting dozens of lovely
breweries in the process, but there are many beer styles that are hard to come
by in Germany which are also worth sampling. Furthermore, by sampling them all
as part of one guided tour, perhaps she would learn to appreciate the
differences between them, and appreciate the vast variety of styles and tastes
a bit more.

As a direct result of this, I wasted no time in waiting a
few weeks before finally getting around to inviting a couple of friends over
for a big tasting party. I originally had this concept that I’d order in beers
from various online beer stores to get a real global selection, but of course
the weather was too nice and I left it too late. So, instead, I cycled to the
local super-supermarket, the one where they have more beer than you can poke a
shaky stick at, whatever that means, and proceeded to buy a decent selection.

I wanted to mix a few typical German beer styles with a
couple of typical non-German ones. I quickly chose the former: a Pilsner, a
Märzen, a Munich Helles, a Munich Dunkles, a Doppelbock,a Kölsch, a Bock, a
Schwarzbier and a Zwickl. That clearly leaves out a dozen or so styles from
this country, but I figured there will be other occasions. The international
selection wasn’t great, but I was able to find a lambic – an Oude Geuze from
Boon no less – as well as an American-style Pale Ale. That meant that we had 11
different ones to drink our way through.

The concept for the evening was straightforward: the
participants did not know which beer was served, but they got a list of all the
beers with tasting notes from the RateBeer web site.
The challenge was then to try and identify the beer on the basis of colour,
nose, palate, mouthfeel and luck.

These tasting notes you find online are actually quite
interesting. Not seldom do you see people describing beers using phrases like
“freshly mown grass”, “old leather”, “not quite ripe raspberries” or “hints of a
15-year old single malt whisky”. Personally, I divide beer tastes into three
categories: “malty”, “hoppy” and “yeasty”, which nicely corresponds to three of
the four main ingredients in beer (I also use the last ingredient, water, to
describe beers sometimes, but usually not in a positive context). Anyway, this
didn’t help the participants of the evening very much, so I was forced to
elaborate by claiming that malty is a bit like biscuit-y or bready, hoppy a bit
like spicy, and yeasty a bit like flowery or fruity. As you can tell, I’m not
very good at this myself.

The sheet with tasting notes and a handy pen

Nevertheless, as the evening progressed, it became quite
clear that the taste buds had been sharpened, because one beer after another
was correctly identified, at least by a majority of the participants. It turns
out that individual tastes and colour perceptions vary, so there was
considerable discussion and a couple of minor fist fights, but all in all an
impressive amount of correct answers were given. Interesting was also the
favourite beers of the group – the clear winner was the Belgian Lambic, which
considering its sour taste is not one that usually wins out amongst people used
to “normal” beer. The clear losers were the bitterest of the beers – the
Pilsner and the American Pale Ale in particular.

The winning beer was a bit of a surprise

At the end of the evening, I was challenged to do a blind
taste where I was not allowed to even see the beer before drinking it, and
although I correctly identified the American Pale Ale, I managed to mistake the
Munich Dunkles for a Pilsner. Yes, you read correctly. Even I, the taster of a
thousand beers (and some), can make such elementary mistakes. It turns out the
science of tasting is heavily influenced by sight, smell, mouthfeel, mood, and,
last but not least, how drunk you are. Oh well, better luck next time.

The take-home message from the blog post is: try something
new! If you regularly choose to stock up your fridge with the same “safe”
selection, you’re missing out on some amazing taste experiences that you
probably never knew existed. Even if you think that you don’t like beer very
much, perhaps it’s simply because you have never tried the type of beer that
suits your particular palate. With online beer shops sprouting up everywhere
and beer selection improving in almost every supermarket, you’ll be spoilt for
choice unless you live in some beer-forsaken place like Iran. Then, after you’ve
stocked up, do a little research on the internet, invite a few friends over and
try to taste the beer whilst having fun drinking it. A competitive element like
blind tasting adds to the fun, as does having the next day off work.

In conclusion, I've learned a few things about beer. First and foremost, I've reconfirmed that I like pretty much every style of beer on the market. Then, I have observed that people who don't count themselves as particularly into beer can still enjoy drinking it. Finally, I have learned that it's not always easy to know one's arse from one's elbow, even though you perhaps thought you had those body parts figured out years ago. On this happy note I shall say a very merry night to you all - and may your fridges forever be well stocked. Terviseks!

2014-01-21

The world had not heard the word “microbrewery” until a
couple of dozen years ago. Then, all of a sudden, there were thirteen to the
dozen of these things. Nowadays, even obscure villages that nobody’s ever heard
of, including the people living there, are sporting microbreweries. What the
heck happened?

There was a time when big breweries thought they could rule
the world – in particular, there was one very evil, big brewery – let's call it SauronBrew – that kept buying out all the other ones, using the One Recipe (crap lager) to
bind them all into the idea that mediocre beers that could be brewed cheaply
but sold reassuringly expensively was all you needed in order to be
successful.

Then, just as it looked as if SauronBrew would indeed
conquer the entire brewing world, one or two enterprising individuals – let’s for
simplicity’s sake call them FrodoBeer and SamAle – came along and started to
brew on an experimental basis, creating new (or re-creating old) brews that
actually tasted like proper beer, or at least tasted like something other than
branded industrial crap lager. Scholars disagree exactly where FrodoBeer and
SamAle started their fight against SauronBrew, but what is quite clear is that
their fight has been crowned by some success, even though the One Recipe has
still not been destroyed, but continues to cast its spell over way too many
Gollum-ible individuals throughout the drinking world.

OK, enough references to that famous trilogy. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please use either Google
or (preferably) your local pub to seek wisdom. An undisputable fact is
that during the last 20 or 30 years, several thousand microbreweries have
sprung up in most countries in this world, including Iceland, and in the last
couple of months I have had the pleasure of tasting the brews from no less than
five of these countries: Poland, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

It started off with Poland. A country I have written about before, more known for its particularly terrible history than for its brewing
heritage, but nevertheless able to brew some decent beers. A good friend of
mine, who happens to come from this place, brought back no fewer than four
lovely bottles of absolutely superb beer from his latest trip back to his
homeland. These were all from breweries I had never heard of or had any chance
of pronouncing correctly, yet they had everything a beer lover loves: plenty of
taste, a refined balance and a lingering aftertaste – without losing the
ability to be refreshing. Poland, be warned: I am coming to visit again – my
last visit was almost 10 years ago and I’ve clearly missed some important
events in my absence.

Great Polish beer, but try to order it at the bar and see what you get...

Next my lovely wife and I flew to Canada to see the family.
Canada is a country more known for its massive size and its abundance of
tundra, nothingness and arctic cold than for its brewing heritage. Nevertheless,
the revolution that has spawned the creation of several thousand breweries
south of the world’s longest unguarded border has also spilled across the very
same border, perhaps due to it not being guarded. Microbreweries are popping up
everywhere, and nowhere is this more visible than in one of the cutest towns in
Canada – Niagara on the Lake – which happens to be my favourite place in Canada
because it has no less than 3 breweries and because I got married there (in no
particular order).

My mother-in-law does not conform to the stereotypical one
that would hate my guts – on the contrary she clearly thinks very highly of my
liver since she bought me a brewery tour for Christmas. So we packed into the
car (this is, after all, Canada, so there are no buses or trains), and headed
off to the Oast Brewery in Niagara-on-the-Lake. This brewery resides in an old
barn or something, and despite opening only 18 months ago is
astonishingly well run. A knowledgeable and pleasant young lady gave us plenty
of samples and showed us the bowels of the brewery where we also got to chat to
the Brewmaster, who despite (or perhaps because of) his young age had conjured
up a few memorable brews, including a Belgian-inspired Saison and a very nice
Pale Ale. Needless to say, we bought both souvebeers and souvenirs.

My Christmas present!

The next brewery was called Silversmith, located in an old
church just down the road from Oast. Although the beers were also very
drinkable, they lacked some of the subtlety of the Oast ones, and the reception
at the brewery was also much less friendly – no brewery tour, only tasting – so
it wasn’t quite the same. Still, if you have a few hours to spare in the
Niagara region, and you’re not desperate for a wine tour, you could do much
worse than coming to Niagara-on-the-Lake to check out its various breweries.
There is a third bonus one too.

Later during Christmas I made my way to Norway, a country
more known for its fjords, northern lights and astronomical prices than for its
brewing heritage. As I have repeatedly commented on this blog, the politicians
in this country have done their utmost to eradicate what little brewing
heritage there is, but despite this there are a dozen or so microbreweries
operating around the country, One of them, Haandbryggeriet, is located in my
home town, and I take no small amount of pride in declaring that this is also
Norway’s best micro. I had the pleasure of tasting their full range of
Christmas beers as well as their “Dark Force”, which is no less than a Russian Imperial Wheat Stout packed with an
unbelievable amount of taste, and their “Dobbel Dose”, which is a seriously
hoppy beer designed to make you outrageously happy.

The only problem with these lovely beers is that they are very
expensive, which means that a lot of bars don’t actually stock them because
there are cheaper alternatives from abroad. And so it came to pass that when I
went skiing in a fashionable ski resort, I was forced to order brews from Sweden
in my own native land. The only alternative was industrial pilsner, and since
the actual brews were in fact quite good, I didn’t mind so much – though I
forget exactly what I drank. The point is... when a local Norwegian
microbrewery is rejected in favour of a Swedish microbrewery situated several hundred
kilometres away because the Norwegian one is simply too expensive (this was
what the bartender told me), there’s something seriously wrong. I can solve
this problem, but I am sadly lacking in dictatorial powers.

Happy blogger with hoppy beer

Finally I was in Denmark, a country known for its brewing heritage, and could once again confirm that the Danes,
as with most things, are way ahead of their Scandinavian brethren, both in
terms of making their industrial lagers taste of nothing and in terms of making
their microbrews taste amazing. I happened to be in Odense, the biggest city on a small island called Fyn, but regardless of where you are in this small, flat country you'll find yourself fairly close to good beers, despite the terrible things the best-known Danish brand has done to the world.

Amazing Danish beer number six-and-half-five-score

In conclusion: I love microbreweries. I love what they’ve
done to increase the choices I have, I love the fact that they’re not afraid of
experimenting with new recipes, and I love the fact that they're making their brews taste like real beer. Not all of them are equally good, and eventually the lesser ones will disappear, but as long as the good ones keep supplying my fridge and the bars I go to when I travel, I don't mind. So let's all adopt the following new year's resolution in time for the Chinese New Year: next time you're in a fancy restaurant or bar and have the choice of a hundred fantastic wines and one crappy beer, demand justice and a microbrew. On this challenging note I shall say farewell and wish you all a very beery 2014. Sjabbeduings!